Socio-Economic Studies (SES) is a brand new subject for us this year, part of the CSE SMTP's curriculum. From the name of the subject itself, I had felt the moment I read the timetable that this would be an extremely enriching and interesting subject. The name of the subject suggested that this would be about the link between social changes and behaviors and the economic status and growth of the country, which seemed particularly interesting.
During our first lesson of SES lesson, Ms Yeo introduced the structure and syllabus of this module to us. Basically, we would be exploring how the different cultures of mainly the chinese and western cultures have led to their economical growth today. With China predicted to overtake the United States of America as the economical super power by 2016, it is definitely beneficial for us to understand how the United States of America have achieved the feat of being economical super power throughout all these years as well as how Chinese values have helped the Chinese to be able to potentially become the economical super power in 2016.
Assessment
For SES, there are no written tests nor examinations. Instead, these will be replaced by reflective journals and class discussions. Personally, I feel that this is a much better to grade our performance in class as it shows our true understanding and allows us to have more freedom to express our ideas, unlike written tests and examinations which are bounded by the limited amount of time we have and the tendency for us to write what we feel will get us to achieve higher marks instead of expressing our true opinion. In my opinion, reflective journals allow us to reflect on the lesson itself after class discussions, consolidate our views and have a better understanding on the topic. There would also be a term paper cum presentation for our assessment, which I feel appropriately replaces the "dead" examinations we have to take for other subjects. While we still have to follow according to the rubrics in order to achieve a better grade, presentations train us to be able to speak our point instead of simply writing, which allows us to convey our point in a more lively way. This definitely fulfills the Hwa Chong mission of nurturing leaders. Leaders are able to speak and convey a point in a way to convince others, not simply writing everything into a piece of paper and submitting it! The SES assessment, although "probably difficult" to score in, would definitely push us further.
Just yesterday (16 January 2012), we had our first SES tutorial, which exposed us to what Cultural Intelligence (CQ) was. Having read up on cultural intelligence before the lesson, I had a better understanding of it and definitely enjoyed the lesson. Cultural Intelligence can be measured from four different aspects: CQ Drive (motivation), the person's interest in and confidence at functioning effectively in culturally diverse settings, CQ Knowledge (cognition) , the person's knowledge on how cultures are similar and different, CQ Strategy (meta-cognition) , on how the person makes sense of culturally diverse experiences and finally CQ Action (behavior), the person's capability to adapt his/her behavior to different cultures.
Without a doubt, CQ is important for an individual. As mentioned by David Livermore, people with higher CQs tend to be consistently more personally and professionally effective, having an edge in the crowded job market and enjoy greater personal satisfaction and less burnout in all kids of multicultural situations. Leaders with high CQ are able to understand how to encounter new cultural situations, judge what goes on in them, make appropriate adjustments to understand and behave effectively in otherwise disorienting circumstances.
While I agree that CQ is important to everybody in today's society, especially to people who plan to be involved in the global economy, to strike businesses around the world or to be a leader in research, industry or government, I believe that CQ is more or less, as Ms Yeo mentioned, common sense. Is behaving appropriately in front of other cultures not common sense? While the formal structure of CQ is one which can help one be better able to understand what is expected of him, it is simply just another ideology which everybody should already know that this is "the politically right, right in terms of social normalities" thing to do put onto paper formally.
However, as I mentioned, the Cultural Intelligence test is still good for people who want to know where they stand in Cultural Intelligence. Personally, I scored badly for CQ Knowledge. This is probably because I have never really met people from differentiated cultural backgrounds, and have not read up much on them. I definitely hope to be able to meet people from other cultures to find out more about them and would make an effort in the future to read up on other cultures or even learn to appreciate songs from different cultural backgrounds.
I definitely hope SES would be as enriching as I hope it would be, and look forward to an enriching journey in the future!
Ng Aik Yang
3S2
Hi Aik Yang, I can see that you are thrilled (like me) to embark on this learning journey. However, I shall admit to you that at the beginning of the first tutorial lesson, I was very nervous about the possible challenges I may encounter in this module. And the main challenge to me is the lack of knowledge towards Western and Eastern cultures, values and their mindsets. I thought this module would resemble something like our Arts of Acts of Thinking last year. And that we must adopt the different mindsets to view certain situations and how those ideologies could bring a change to this world (like China rising to become the second Economic superpower in the world).
ReplyDeleteHowever, after a while, I felt more comfortable. I understand the assessments and tasks ahead of me are challenging, but I feel that these tasks would actually spur me on to read up more on the various case studies and perceive them from different angles. In fact, the module is not as terrifying as I thought it was at the beginning of the tutorial lesson. All we have to do is to write reflective journals and do class presentations and discussions. But I totally disagree on your point that the usual tests and examinations are 'dead'. No they are not! They still require us to think critically like the assessments assigned to us in this module. The main difference is that in this module we will be required to share our thoughts and knowledge with our friend. This is indeed very suitable for this module as it promotes the sharing of opinions and insights among all of us, allowing us to learn in a dynamic, enriching and engaging atmosphere. Therefore, I partially look forward to completing this tasks. (the other 'half' of me do not look forward to them because they are indeed challenging) However, I feel that we mustn't lower down our heads at all cost. To allow ourselves to gain new insights and gather more opinions, we must open our hearts and absorb the values and cultures we are going to learn in our case studies.
I look forward to a fun and engaging Socio-Economic Studies learning journey for all of us. I hope you would also welcome the new knowledge with a positive mindset and continue to think critically about the effect of the ideologies on certain societies. I wish you all the best for the learning journey ahead.